


Take Me Up With You Dearie

by madame_faust



Series: Smoke and Noise [1]
Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Disabled Character of Color, Historical References, M/M, Not Beta Read, Not Own Voices, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26556067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: After a magic trick goes awry with disastrous and life-altering results, Erik is determined to make it up to his Persian friend through the only thing that he can think of which will convey the depths of his remorse: ballooning.
Relationships: Erik | Phantom of the Opera/The Persian
Series: Smoke and Noise [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1931311
Comments: 14
Kudos: 13





	Take Me Up With You Dearie

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prequel to my Pharoga couple in 'Muses' and 'Smoke and Noise,' the main differences from canon are that Erik is just a court magician, no side of assassination and Rahim (the Persian) is an artist, NOT the chief of police. 
> 
> Quick note before we get started: the character of Félix is based on an actual historical person, Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (known professionally as Nadar) who was a French portrait photographer and balloon enthusiast who *did* photograph Naser al-Din Shah, the Shah of Persia during the period in which Leroux claims Erik was in Persia. I think Nadar's portrait was done in Europe, but it's my fic and I'll do what I want to ;-) It is true that Naser al-Din Shah was a huge proponent of photography and brought a lot of European photographers to his court to take pictures, so, hey, anything's possible right?
> 
> The title is taken from the novelty song from the early 1910s, 'Take Me Up With You, Dearie,' it's DELIGHTFUL.

It was meant to be a simple pyrotechnic. A little bang and minor explosion of sparks to mark the end of the trick. 

He must have erred with the gunpowder. Erik had been called brilliant once or twice, but _careful_ , never. And Rahim had paid the price. Standing too near when the spark lit, an enormous explosion of noise. The whole of the court shrieked, but the strangest sound of all, one that struck a discordant note in Erik's memory when he recalled that horrible day (over and over, he did, when he slept, as he woke, when he dreamed), was a high-pitched titter of laughter. One of the Shah's wives evidently thought the whole mishap was quite funny. She laughed even as the old Daroga knelt by his grandson's body and shouted for a doctor. 

Erik tried to approach him, on numb legs, but he was held back, kept away. As was right and proper - it was a miracle the court believed him when he said it was an accident, only an accident. Still, on the day he was close enough to see the blood trickling from Rahim's ears. That stoppered his heart worse than the sudden explosion has. 

_"Do you sing?"_ Rahim asked quite out of the blue on the road back from Nizhny Novgorod. His ears were sunburned, but Erik perceived them going redder still as he ducked his head and mumbled, _"You've got a...very nice voice. To listen to."_

And Rahim had so enjoyed listening to him. At first, conversing in French, the only language the two shared until Erik started to wrap his tongue around the Persian language. And he could sing. He did have, as Rahim suspected, a very nice voice. His repertoire was hardly sophisticated; he sang songs of the roads, lullabyes and folksongs, dirty ditties picked up around bonfires and in cheap inns, holding places for travelers. 

At night, when Rahim was awake, jittery with an unhappy, nervous energy which made him toss and turn, even when he was in his own rooms surrounded by his own people, Erik would take up his fiddle and play sweetly into the night until he slept.

It was no trouble for him; if he was a joy to hear, Rahim was a joy to look at. Beautiful, with dark, smooth skin, lithe fingers, thick dark hair and eyes the color of jade. He was kind and curious. And an artist - his work was rendered in charcoal and oil and more than once he'd begged Erik to sit for him. Erik always refused. Said he wouldn't dare. Art ought to be beautiful. He was not. He'd not sully Rahim's folios with his hideousness. To make up for that refusal, he sang and played for him whenever he asked. Seemed more than a fair trade to him - to offer loveliness when ugliness was requested.

Rahim's eyes were spared. And his hands. He could see beauty, create beauty - but he could not hear it. 

For a time, they feared Rahim would hear nothing - not Erik's voice, nor his fiddle, nor any conversation ever again. When Erik finally worked up the courage to visit him, Rahim beckoned him forward toward the sick bed. Erik came, as eager as a dog to his master's side. He raised his hands to Erik's throat, thumbs against his Adam's apple. For a second, Erik thought he meant to strangle the life out of him and he closed his eyes, let his shoulders go slack.

 _Yes_ , he thought to himself. _Go on. I deserve it. For what I've done to you. What I've taken from you. Go on._

But Rahim did not press his hands inward, did not destroy Erik's sole claim to beauty. Instead he requested, in a hesitant, trembling voice, "Sing."

Eyes still closed, still willing to let Rahim exact whatever price he could from him, Erik sang. Rahim drew close, until the shell of his left ear pressed against the nose of Erik's mask.

 _"Without the mask,"_ Rahim insisted.

Erik would do anything he asked - even sit for a portrait, damn it all - and he complied. Rahim shut his eyes as he did so. Felt Erik take a breath beneath his lightly pressing fingers. Then he _heard_. Faintly. But he heard.

That was months ago. The right ear was gone, as far as the doctors could make out, the left slowly improving, though Rahim's sleep suffered more than usual due to a continual buzz, the drone of a saw in wood he claimed plagued him constantly. Still, he was not stone deaf. And his good nature counted it as a blessing.

The word, 'blessing,' was like a dagger in Erik's heart. Blessing. How could he be so good? How could Rahim seek Erik out, still want his companionship, still ask for the fiddle though the doctor warned him against it, telling him he ought to protect what little hearing he had left.

Erik could deny him nothing. But he wanted to give him something he had not asked for - a gift. An apology. A penance, though nothing could be done to make up for the devastation he caused, however unintentional. 

"Surprise," Erik intoned, lips once again close to Rahim's ear, breathing in the scent of him, skin warmed by the sun, sweat clinging lightly to his black hair at the temples. 

Before them stretched a brilliant canopy of color, fluttering slightly here and there in the wind. The canopy was attached to as basket by which a friendly-looking, portly man with a mustache as wide as his smile waved merrily at them. 

"Perfect day for it, gentlemen!" Félix crowed, jogging toward them. Having been forewarned of Rahim's impediment, he fairly shouted, "It's a still day, monsieur! You'll be able to take some marvelous photographs! Come, come, let me explain the process.."

Rahim hesitated only slightly before he followed. With a disbelieving chuckle and a smile of heartbreaking sincerity, he looked at Erik and shook his head. The fondness with which he spoke took Erik's breath away. "You - you didn't have to. You _really_ shouldn't have. But thank you."

_Don't thank me yet. You don't know if the pictures will turn out._

It was the sort of careless remark that Erik cloaked himself in like armor. Unable to believe any compliment or gratitude was sincerely meant unless it came in the form of ardent applause and gasps of delight and appreciation from an audience, or else coins, cold and real tossed at his feet or pressed into his hands. Adulation and money were all he cared about. All that mattered - but try as he might, he couldn't get the words out. The arch sarcasm was stuck in his throat as firmly as if Rahim had really taken revenge as he might have all those weeks ago and squeezed until he'd wrung Erik's skinny neck.

Finally, he managed, "You're welcome." But Rahim had started toward the dormant balloon and its captain, only a few yards away, but too far from Erik to hear him. 

Félix bemoaned his difficulties and crowed his triumphs in overcoming the difficulties inherent in photographing the world from within the basket of a balloon. Rahim, Erik saw from the frustrated set of his mouth and brow, only caught half of what he said, but he made up for the deficiency by writing down what he deemed to be relevant information on a little pocket notebook he had on his person. That he passed discretely along to Rahim who smiled one of his dazzling smiles again and once more expressed his thanks. 

"You're coming?" Rahim asked. It was only half a question, for this was undoubtedly a novel experience and Erik collected novel experiences the way ordinary men collected stamps. Admittedly it was a bit of an awkward squeeze, the two of them, Félix, and the camera equipment, but the managed it.

The _fwooom_ of the gas catching, the smell of it, made Erik feel distinctly unwell; his knees suddenly felt like water and his head was dizzy. 

"Alright there, my boy?" Félix asked, looking worried. "If you don't have a strong stomach, I'd rather you bail out now - didn't even occur to me you'd be put off heights, so tall you are!"

"I'm fine," Erik managed through gritted teeth. It wasn't the motion or the height that troubled him, it was the memory. A sudden bang, an explosion, smoke everywhere and poor Rahim still and bleeding in the wreckage. 

A warm hand squeezed his elbow and Rahim sidled up closer to him - though it wasn't much of an adjustment, the nature of their conveyance meant they'd begun the ascent fairly cozy already. 

"Alright?" he asked, though the noise from the fire meant he couldn't hear Erik's reply.

"Never better," Erik smiled; he disliked showing his mouth and teeth when he arrived in Persia and eagerly swathed his face in scarves - both comfortable and concealing. But recently he'd made do with a mask which left his mouth exposed. Despite his own discomfort, it was easier for Rahim to read his hideous lips. 

Their flight was entirely northerly; they were tethered so that the photographs might come out better. Rahim had been educated by master painters when he was a boy and showed a knack for it, but the rage in the court was for photography. Erik knew Rahim disliked the medium for taking a likeness; he preferred to let the subject be seen through his eyes, he thought there was more life and vitality in oil than in albumen, silver, and salt. Still, he thought photography had its place. Landscapes for certain. And to take a likeness of a place from above, from higher than the tallest tower in the city? Absolutely thrilling. 

Hardly a visual artist, Erik found himself breathless as the floated above the city. The people were absorbed into the landscape and the towers and domes and rooftops seemed like so many building blocks in a child's nursery. Like a child, he peered down over the edge of the basket, enraptured, the breeze whipping past the exposed skin of his jaw and neck, whistling in his ears. 

That dizzy, off-kilter sensation was back. Perhaps he was a little done-in by great heights. But more than that he felt a queasy insignificance. A few hundred feet into the air and all the teeming humanity below disappeared. 

It made one think. It made one think serious thoughts, which Erik was not at all fond of. Thoughts about mortality and impermanence and a poem that he'd heard once from an English sword-swallower who missed his calling as a schoolteacher; he taught Erik to read and write, which was no mean feat.

_'Nothing beside remains round the decay...boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away.'_

And, less philosophically, but no less urgently, 'Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying.'

Fortunately he was called back from the edge by Félix and his revolutionary process - the basket must be covered such that the gas from the balloon not interfere with the collodion upon the photography plates.

Erik was content, if still uneasy in his guts, to crouch back like a hapless spider and let the artist ply their trade. He closed his eyes and tried to banish the thought of the rooftops and his sudden melancholy introspection. He thought instead of campfires and bawdy songs, the rough and easy companionship of travelers and Rahim's warm fingers encircling his wrist -

Oh! The latter was quite real and present. Rahim was before him, hauling him back to standing; the canopy was lifted and they were still airborne. Erik must have been sitting longer than he realized. 

Rahim took him back to the edge, his left hand clamped quite firmly about Erik's arm, fingers curving into the hollow of his palm. The right arm he had draped about his waist.

"I told you I'm fine!" Erik insisted when he belatedly realized Rahim had pretensions of steadying him, as though he _was_ afraid. Which he most certainly was _not_. The sudden, jelly-like weakness in his knees was due entirely to the sight of the landscape making him recollect overwrought poetry.

Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair. 

The dreadful product of his own works was beside him, his terrible handiwork entirely ignorant of Erik's repeated protestations that he did _not_ need Rahim to grasp him about the waist, that he was perfectly already, _really_.

"Last look, gentlemen!" Félix informed them. "Enjoy it - she's a beautiful country, your Persia, monsieur."

With Rahim's arm about him, Erik peered down. It was a beautiful country. Here, where the rolling green hills met the sea, with mountains in the distance. A powerful, beautiful landscape. Collodion and glass could hardly do it justice; he wondered if Rahim would tint the photographs when they were finished. An artist's eye and a camera's objectivity; perhaps that would please him. 

Finally on terra firma again, the two thanked Félix (and Erik paid him for his time and trouble), with Rahim and the balloonist exchanging some further conversation about the plates. That conversation concluded, he tucked Erik's arm into the crook of his elbow and started to lead him back to their lodgings. 

"I'm alright!" Erik exploded finally - Rahim placed him on his left, he _had_ to be able to hear him. "Honestly."

"You hated every second of that, didn't you?" Rahim remarked pleasantly. There was a distinctly sly look in his sparkling green eyes that Erik could not help being charmed by, despite his bluster. "Torture."

"It was not!" Erik retorted hotly.

"You were turning green."

"I was _philosophizing_ ," Erik insisted. He listed only slightly to the right as he did so, but Rahim gripped his arm and led him on. "Anyway. It was your present."

They were far enough out of Félix's line of view and not quite back to town when Rahim stopped. He was shorter than Erik, but more sturdily constructed and proved an effective barrier to further travel when he stood in front of him. There was an expression of patience upon his face and not a little pained weariness. Erik was reminded suddenly of the ikons in the religious buildings in Russia. 

"It was wonderful," Rahim said, simply and earnestly. "I thank you - especially when it was so clearly a terrible experience for you."

"It was _fine_ \- "

"But," he continued firmly. "I'll not have you treat me like a poor invalid for the rest of my days to soothe your guilty consience. Do you understand?"

Far from feeling like a jelly, Erik went cold all over like he'd been plunged in a bucket of icewater.

 _Here it is_ , he thought with dull, dawning horror. _The severance. He should have wrung my neck when he hand the chance and had it over quicker._

"I forgive you," Rahim said simply. "It was an accident. I forgave you ages ago. Only we can't go on if you won't forgive yourself."

 _Go on?_ Erik wondered stupidly. _Where are we going? We just went into the sky together! Where else could we possibly -_

Rahim rose up suddenly, pressing his lips to the corner of Erik's horrible mouth in a swift, soft kiss. It was not a comradely embrace of soldiers, nor the perfunctory greeting of acquaintances or the more familiar affection of kinsmen. This was something else and Erik's mind went fuzzy and dizzy again, thinking of ancient ruins and rosebuds.

"All that said," he continued, rocking back on his heels as though nothing extraordinary had happened. "I _did_ enjoy myself. Very much. If the pictures come out well, I might ask to do it again - you're very clever, I'm sure you could work out how to fly one of those things so your countryman isn't breathing down our necks the whole time. Let me know when you've worked it out."

Then he turned on his heel and strode on toward town.

Erik's left hand moved of its own accord to touch the place upon his mouth and cheek where Rahim's lips had been. 

"Whatever do you mean by...we hardly need to be _afloat_ to...Rahim! RAHIM!"

But Rahim just strode on ahead, and Erik was half-convinced he hadn't heard him - until he slowed his stride and offered his elbow for Erik to take. 

"Still unsteady?" he asked meaningfully. There was a decided twinkle in his eyes and a self-satisfied smirk in the corner of his mouth.

This time, Erik took his arm firmly and answered, quite sincerely, " _Yes._ "


End file.
